Culture » December 3, 2012

Swiftian Logic

Email this article to a friend

your email

your name

recipient(s) email (comma separated)

message

captcha

The rest of Swift’s music, especially when she talks about other women, tends to reinforce the message that female self-acceptance is only all right if you have a specific kind of female self. Or maybe just one female self, named Taylor.

In 2009, I wrote a blog post for Bitch Media detailing why I did not think Taylor Swift’s music was feminist. I was subsequently informed, for several years running, that I was an “idiot.” In a writing career studded with opinions on rape, abortion and the shortcomings of various politicians, that post remains one of my most controversial. Which is to say: Some people have a lot invested in this particular pop star.

Taylor Swift started out as a country prodigy, tapped at age 14 to work with various practiced songwriters. (Despite Swift’s reputation as an emotionally acute singer-songwriter, all of her albums except Speak Now, her fourth, have employed industry veterans to co-write her work.) A romance with Jonas Brothers heartthrob Joe—followed by a few spiteful songs and YouTube videos that seemed to be about the breakup—turned her into a household name. She’s now a 22-year-old megastar with a cult of devout fans and five albums under her belt. Her latest, Red, has had the best-selling first week of any album since 2002.

Swift trades in a brand of swooning, fairy-tale romanticism. References to “magic” and “princes” abound. This she laces with barbed populism; her foils are the elitist cheer captains, critics and hipsters of the world. Despite being incredibly wealthy, successful, famous and conventionally beautiful, Swift presents herself as a humble, gosh-golly Everywoman. This may not be true of Taylor Swift’s life, but it does a lot to establish common ground with her listeners. Swift purports to speak for the ignored, uncool and snubbed girls of the world; her voice blends with theirs, makes them feel heard, or at least reflected. Are you there, God? It’s me, Taylor.

Outsider, however, doesn’t equal feminist. Swift’s public persona relies on her being delicate, pure and “good,” the virginal side of Freud’s Madonna/whore complex—something she works to establish in her lyrics. After all, fairy tales require a “princess,” something Swift actually calls herself at times.

At other times, she’s telling boyfriends that she’s “too young to be messed with” and claiming that an ex-boyfriend kept her scarf because “it reminds [him] of innocence,” presumably Swift’s. And, like “good” self-infantilized girls from time immemorial, she reserves the right to castigate “bad” women. “Better Than Revenge” is a slut-shaming temper tantrum about an “actress” who’s “better known for the things that she does on the mattress.” “You Belong with Me” sets a mean-tempered girl in “short skirts” and “high heels” against the sweet, modestly dressed Swift.

Of course there’s nothing wrong with being young or inexperienced or understated in one’s sexuality. But when that’s presented as the standard of female worth, and as a legitimate reason to be cruel or judgmental toward women who don’t meet that standard … well, then we’re dealing with blatant sexism.

As it happens, Swift agrees with me: Her music is not very feminist. In an October 22 interview with the Daily Beast, Swift said, “I don’t really think about things as guys versus girls. I never have. I was raised by parents who brought me up to think if you work as hard as guys, you can go far in life.”

This is a typical opinion from young women who don’t know much about feminism, but it’s always disappointing. Many women slammed Swift for her misunderstanding of feminism, which doesn’t mean “guys versus girls,” but rather, an end to the automatic assumption that guys are superior to girls. Jessica Wakeman of The Frisky called out the idea that “when women don’t succeed it’s because we just didn’t work hard enough.” Indeed, the notion that structural discrimination can be overcome by spunk and can-do spirit does seem a little Republican.

But of course she also had her defenders. “It’s not our place to demand that Taylor Swift be knowledgeable and eloquent on any topic, much less feminism,” wrote Daisy Barringer at xoJane. Other feminists privately expressed frustration that a woman who doesn’t openly identify as “feminist” is the automatic target of outrage from women who do; they argue that this does nothing to lift women up, and plenty to tear individual women down.

And that’s fair. A feminism that devotes itself only to critiquing other women’s lack of feminism will get nowhere. Yet when someone is presented as a role model for young women, we needn’t automatically accept her work as empowering. The key to the debate is not what Swift intends her music to do—questions about the artist’s “intent” are pretty dated, after all—but what listeners do with her music.

One thing they do is commiserate. Swift famously writes, in detail, about the men she’s dated who have let her down. Songs about broken hearts have been around as long as music, but every one of Swift’s albums comes with clumsily coded clues—capitalized letters in the lyric books—that spell out which famous men the songs are about. For example, the code “MAPLE LATTES” accompanies the song about the scarf-stealer. Celebrity blogs went wild when Swift was spotted drinking maple lattes with actor Jake Gyllenhaal.

Naming the evil that men do, even when that evil is as banal as not giving back a scarf after a breakup, can be an empowering move for young women. So, where some of us see People Magazine: The Musical—celebrity gossip set to twangy guitar—others see a young woman who’s fearlessly claiming her right to express anger.

Thus, on some level, Swift’s songs are a feminist project. Instead of existing in isolation and assuming that any bad emotional reaction to a man must be her own fault—which is the space the culture wants young women to exist within—Swift is sitting down to write out her own reactions and share them with other women. If listening to the woeful tale of Gyllenhaal’s scarf envy is what it takes to get a young girl to start questioning her levels of self-blame, that’s good enough for me.

What I question is whether such a ballad will necessarily lead the girl into a context where she can connect the hurt she’s experienced to the culture that has systematically given men’s feelings and experiences priority over women’s.

The rest of Swift’s music, especially when she talks about other women, tends to reinforce the message that female self-acceptance is only all right if you have a specific kind of female self. Or maybe just one female self, named Taylor. Consider her complicated stance on boyfriend-stealing: “You Belong with Me” is vicious because she wants to steal the other girl’s boyfriend, whereas “Better Than Revenge” is vicious because the other girl stole her boyfriend. The primary sin one can commit in a Swiftian universe isn’t treating women badly; it’s refusing to give one specific woman exactly what she wants. Structural critique is what real feminists do, and you can’t build a structural critique entirely around the idea that one person deserves all the toys.

Well, I guess Ms Doyle is right, some folks do seem to have a huge "emotional investment" in Princess Swift!

Posted by ming_on_mongo on 2015-02-06 17:44:12

I guess Sady would agree with the following celebrity article; that if she's not putting out enough to please the men, she needs to be dumped. I wonder what Doyle said about West's lynching and date raping of women?

“Taylor is concerned that the public will think she’s a wh*re because she dates around, that she doesn’t put out,” a pal close to Taylor explained. The “friend” continues on to say that Harry’s not the only one not getting it; “What she doesn’t get is that the guys keep dumping her because she’s being a prude.”

Harry’s “pal” says that it was obvious that Taylor had a “thing” for Harry, but she just wouldn’t “put out” as often as he wanted. Since he’s an 18-year-old hormone infused star with options around the world, his relationship with Taylor, who supposedly preferred droning on about antiques over getting nakey for her man, grew boring fast; “Harry is a young boy, with ladies throwing themselves at him and has had a string of relationships with older women. It’s no secret he’s sexually active and is enjoying his fame at the moment. But Taylor just wasn’t up for it as much as he is. They were sexually incompatible.”

Meanwhile, Taylor’s friend, who attributes Taylor’s “prudish” attitude to her desire to remain “wholesome” - me thinks that ship sailed after John Mayer- says while Taylor’s intentions are to maintain a “clean” image, the singer just doesn’t understand how she’s ruining her own life; “She puts herself in these stupid situations but then honestly can’t understand why she’s getting such a shabby reputation.”

“Harry wants to go out to fancy bars and clubs and enjoy being young – but Taylor’s more of a homebody!” the source explained. “It drove him crazy, so he gave her the elbow!”

So while Taylor was “obsessed” with Harry and “over the moon” when he agreed to make their relationship public, Harry, for his part, “was over it before it ever really even began.”

Posted by betsy w on 2013-01-15 14:07:27

Typical Communist homosexual In These Times reader who hates ordinary people who work for a living and America.

Posted by Elitism_FIghter on 2012-12-11 18:10:37

I don't know who she is. What do I win?

Posted by Garbo on 2012-12-11 13:25:11

If Taylor Swift's body of work is an ongoing self-absorbed temper tantrum (which seems like a fair read) then I see her as a woman claiming a right that male songwriters have long taken for granted: the right to be myopic, arrogant, and immature rather than magnanimous and universal in the face of romantic disappointment. Ben Gibbard, Matthew Sweet, Ben Folds, and (as Lindy West has deeply explored) Rivers Cuomo are just a few of the pantheon of dudes who've routinely reserved the right to express irrational butt-hurt over romantic rejection. Countless man-penned hits from as far back as recorded pop music extends, have basically taken the position, "I'm priceless, and anyone who doesn't satisfy my needs is meaningless." By proving that young women can be just as arrogant, entitled and self-pitying as young men, Swift actually takes a kind of sideways stride for the feminist cause. And who knows? Her message may mature as she does.

Posted by A Yell Adams on 2012-12-10 14:34:48

Well I like her music, I like that shes Not a skank showing off her body.

Posted by Linda Friedman on 2012-12-10 10:10:37

Hmmm, is she talking about an actual scarf or is it code for you-know-which piece of cloth? You know, more like a tissue... Ok, too much.I'm sick of Taylor Swift not for the image she projects, but for her astounding lack of voice. And blandness. And political yellowness (In my terms at least, that means the Democratic Party, compared to any SDP) I mean, sure, she's done some charity and spread some anti-bullying messages, but come the fuck on, get some ideological gut for Joan Baez' sake, it's the new deal with kids your generation Taylor, on a global basis.

Posted by Alberto Cox Délano on 2012-12-10 01:41:25

Taylor has only released four albums to date. She has worked with co-writers since the beginning of her career but each album features (often superior) solo writes. There is one clear voice/persona in her work.

She has not made notable reference to fairytales since her second album, Fearless, which was released when she was 18. And even then, she took down the fairytale myth in "White Horse". And, as you say, there's nothing wrong with being a dreamer.

"Swift’s public persona relies on her being delicate, pure and “good” - the virginal side of Freud’s Madonna/whore complex—something she works to establish in her lyrics". This is completely untrue. The media have labelled her as a woman with a 'reputation'. Harry Styles was photographed arriving at her New York hotel with an overnight bag three times last week. Her music has dealt with her sexuality since her very first single, "Tim McGraw"; her boyfriend's truck "had a tendency of getting stuck on back roads at night". In "Sparks Fly", she instructs a man to "give me something that'll haunt me when you're not around". In "All Too Well", she reminisces about nights when a man made her his own. In "Treacherous", she promises to do "anything you say, if you say it with your hands". There are also countless indirect sexual references: "Flew me to places I'd never been, until you put me down", "Up in your room and our slates our clean".

“You Belong with Me” is not a slut-shaming song. Taylor, characterizing herself as an outsider, is envious of the popular, glamorous, fashionable cheerleader. I'm baffled that anyone could find it "vicious". It's an inner monologue about unrequited teenage love. Is it wrong or antifeminist of Taylor to voice feelings of envy? Being a feminist does not require a woman to be perfect.

I do agree that "Better Than Revenge" (a response to Joe Jonas's "Much Better", a song about how Camille Belle was much better than her) is problematic but I don't know how she has become the feminist anti-Christ because of it. Beyonce and Lauryn Hill have both released songs with similar sentiments but don't get the same type of coverage in the feminist sphere. Taylor has also written "Fifteen", where she tells teenage girls that "in your life, you'll do greater things than dating the boy on the football team" and "I swore I was going to marry him someday, but I realized some bigger dreams of mine".

I think the current ridicule of Taylor in the media will inform her next album e.g. "the many men of Taylor Swift", "everybody's girlfriend", "Swift = fast" etc. The comments she made to The Daily Beast were ill-informed but she since told Elle Canada that feminism is something that she wants to learn about. We should be welcoming her and educating her, not tearing her apart.

Posted by anna on 2012-12-09 04:16:36

Better Question: Is Taylor Swift Taylor Swift. The answer is no, the machine has replaced her with a brand - blame the brand makers, not the girl (except that she signed the deal in the first place, I guess).

Posted by Michael Holloway on 2012-12-05 20:45:14

I don't remember a squeak attributed to her name. I don't even know what her voice sounds like. That's because I'm one of those "weirdos" who at some point decided that getting your eardrums reamed by the same 20 songs the record companies want you to buy is not entertainment worthy of the name. Regardless, I read the article because I saw her name and picture on a bus publicity panel once. As it turns out, my first impression of her when looking at that face on a bus panel was right, as it never fails me when doing a judgement of anything that has that whiff of pop about it. If you had to write a whole article about denouncing her as yet another Britney Spears clone, it could only be because her looks are somewhat threatening to you. The 'ole "Let's use that college education to deconstruct girls with threatening looks" routine....

She's 22. At the very dawn of political enlightenment, stolen from the women's lib class you take for granted and onto the recording studio and tabloid cover pages, being exposed to shit you and I can only dream about. Let her sing her stupid love songs, and if you're too offended by that photoshopped face not showing sympathy for the plight of young girls in Burma, just do like me and stop listening to the radio.

Posted by Alexandre Richard on 2012-12-04 12:34:27

I'm generally apathetic towards Taylor as I find there are far more objectionable female role-models and she is not without good acts, but I have to agree with many of these arguments. She appears to be so wholesome that few seem to question the messages she is teaching young girls about being a female. This may possibly be just as misleading as the unquestionably "negative" influences of other, more overtly sexual pop-stars. Even if you are inclined to tell your child that it's inappropriate to act like Rihanna, who is going to talk to their daughter about why you maybe shouldn't act exactly like Taylor Swift? Also, I believe that "Speak Now" is actually her third album

Posted by RL on 2012-12-04 00:49:49

thank you for this! this has been my thinking on taylor swift for awhile now. glad to know other people share the same views.

Posted by M on 2012-12-03 23:05:23

If Taylor's one fault is slut shaming, and encouraging girls to be the princess in their fairytale, I'm not sure why that's a problem. I'd rather my daughter look like Taylor Swift than Katy Perry.